Canada: Truckers Protest High Fuel Prices

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Canoe

Excerpts:

"AMHERST, N.S. (CP) -- Defiant truckers parked their big rigs along a key section of the Trans-Canada Highway on Monday in a protest that threatened to roll across the country.

At least 400 big 18-wheelers lined the highway at the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick boundary in a partial blockade that almost completely paralysed the movement of goods in Atlantic Canada.

Late Monday, the Nova Scotia government obtained an interim injunction against the protesters who were trying to draw attention to high fuel prices."

(snip)

"This keychain controls the food chain," said Germaine, holding the keys to his rig. "So how long is the government prepared to ignore us."

(snip)

"The protest in the Maritimes was the first visible sign of growing discontent in the North American trucking business, mainly over the skyrocketing price of diesel fuel which has increased 150 per cent in the past year.

Some truckers now have to pay close to $1,000 to fill up all of their tanks.

The anger appears to be spreading.

Several hundred truck drivers throughout the Greater Toronto area parked their rigs and refused to work on Monday unless they get help with diesel fuel costs and wages that haven't risen in 12 years.

Many met at a Sikh mosque in Toronto's west end to mobilize peaceful protests at truck stops in Toronto, London, Ont. and Bloomfield, about 100 kilometres east of Windsor.

"We're staying out for as long as it takes," said trucker Paul Bourgeois.

"This is going nationwide, if not North American-wide."

(snip)

In Newfoundland, about a dozen rigs parked at a weigh station in Fox Trap, about 20 kilometres from St. John's.

Ninety per cent of domestic transportation of cargo in Canada is moved by truck, and 80 per cent of the country's commodities is transported by truck.

Trucks are especially important in Atlantic Canada where rail service has been drastically reduced in recent years and no longer exists in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island.

Jeannie Cruickshank with the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors said any delay in the delivery of foodstuffs is troublesome.

She said retail stores use Mondays to replenish their shelves after heavy weekend shopping.

Any holdup raises concerns over quantity and quality -- especially for perishables like imported fruit and vegetables.

She said it will also have the effect of pushing up prices."

(snip)

(Ontario Premier) "Harris said Ontario has not increased its share of the fuel tax since 1995.

"For oil companies to say tax is a problem -- it's the same tax when diesel fuel was 40 cents," he said. "That has not contributed one cent to the increase in diesel fuels."

(snip to end of article)

deja vu

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 22, 2000

Answers

Rachel,
Fascinating. The Australian rail infrastructure has been allowed to decline in favour of trucking goods. Rural roads haven't kept pace and big rigs rip along heedless of others. It's interesting to read that others too must cope with such problems. There's grumbling in local councils and about cost of fuel.

Regards from the antipodean theatre,

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), February 22, 2000.


Looks like the US truckers are following suit. They're organizing a convoy that will leave from New Jersey heading to D.C. this morning. The trucking industry is known for being very supportive of each other. I bet this is bigger than they had planned. It'll be interesting to see the government and media spin on this. Good luck to them all.

-- Trish (adler2@webtv.net), February 22, 2000.

The dominoe effect in action!

-- ,-, (comma@dash.comma), February 22, 2000.

"This keychain controls the food chain," said [Earl] Germaine, holding the keys to his rig... I like it. I can envision it on a poster, underneath a picture of a hand holding a set of keys (one of them prominently saying "Peterbilt"). I wish them luck.

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), February 22, 2000.

I still say that the Ontario truckers assn. had the right idea -- last week articles were linked here saying that they are petitioning the Ontario government to lower fuel taxes.

Come to think of it, the U.S. highway trust fund, which all of us who are not driving big rigs pay into to the tune of something over 40 cents per gallon, has some unbelievable amount salted away.

Yeah, for a rainy day, like we're all gonna stop driving!

Oh, yeah, I remember -- the unelected ones are using it to move us away from our cars and into mass transit. Uh, but the U.N. has Agenda 21 rolling along with a good head of steam -- which, per their maps, is supposed to turn the whole darn country west of the Ohio River back to total wilderness. Yeah, we get to have a few transportation corridors. Uh huh.

How about a national movement petitioning Congress to cut all fuel taxes by, say, 50%, until this situation gets straightened out !

Yeah, I'm kidding. And no, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

How serious is this for independent truckers, for agriculture, for contractors bidding on spring projects, and for anyone else who cannot pass these additional costs along? Very serious.

Not to preach, folks, but if you are not and never did make your living in one of those fields, you may not appreciate how hard this is hitting already. Parking the rigs is fine, except that the payments don't stop. Figure out the payments on, say, a 150k rig over 5 years. Lends new meaning to the saying 'running to stay ahead of the wind'.

How serious might this get? There was a post on this board, last week, I believe, which indicated that one of Florida's largest ports (the Port of Miami?) was about shut down by the independent truckers. Not a strike, but just hundreds and hundreds of independents who simply could not afford to run. Darn few gocery chain warehouses have railroad sidings. Most grocery chain warehouses, I believe, have a maximum of 3 days of food in inventory. Thus, if this situation continues developing, foodwise it can move beyond perishables pretty rapidly.

What we could use now are some hard figures on what percentage of, e.g., food, is hauled by rail, by independent truckers, and by company rigs. Those numbers I don't know where to find.

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 22, 2000.



Just in time inventory, places most of what we use on 18 wheel warehouses. Hmmmm... I bet the accountants didn't think about this one. But hay they can only add and subtract and can't multiply worth a darn.

Justthinkin

-- justthink com (justthinkin@foodcosts.com), February 22, 2000.


--I've always wondered what it would take for both the farmers and the truckers to get it in gear and DEMAND some sort of national policy and cosciousness shift. They should get real wages for what they do, and demand serious crash emergency research and devopment of petroleum alternatives. I think a nationwide, LONG strike is well overdue by them.

I also think that those two groups-very generally speaking-don't have the quorum to pull it off, even though it would work, and quickly. If we can devote massive research into stoopid 3-d gore video games, I think the important problems could be addressed, once people see it will effect them a lot more than their point score, or for that matter, paying actrons, sports "stars", and musicians millions of dollars for thier "services". Priorities will either be realigned now voluntarily, becasue we as society realize it's the right thing to do,or some time in the future it will become impossible to avoid, at even greater expense and effort. It's inevitable.

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), February 22, 2000.


I LOVE my preps!

Got food?

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), February 22, 2000.


Zog, et. al.,

In the eyes of the regulators, the unelected who know so, so much better than us what is good for us, truckers and farmers are often lumped into lesser forms of the human species. Just a sarcastic comment? No -- I speak from experience. Doubt it? Just watch the nightly news when a trucker (or ag) related story comes up.

Unfortunately, that same attitude is true of an awful lot of the population. Filthy, scary damn monsters taking up MY highway! &^&&&*)(*(&*&( Or, how can anybody be so dumb as to choose to stay in a business demanding towards or over a million in capital just to make (these days) less than a public school teacher does. Farming, of course.

The point, of course, is that an awful lot of us look down on those we don't understand -- and ag., for example, now involves much less than 2% of the U.S. population.

Would independent truckers and ag. ever get together? Not likely. Both are too darn independent. Heck, if the independent truckers even kind-of get it together for more than a few days, Clinton may have justification for lord-knows-what.

BTW, was listening to some truckers talk on the radio the other day about what car drivers don't know about rigs and drivers. The idea occurred that perhaps everyone (all drivers) ought to have to get the same ticket truckers have to have, a CDL. Why? It'll sure drive home the awareness of how weight effects stopping distance, as well as a whole series of other points about driving defensively. Not to mention that it would give car drivers a little better perspective on the workaday lives truckers lead.

If you want to raise your driving safety consciousness, do two things. Go and get a CDL; you'll take a long test from a 1/2 inch-thick book at minimum. Then, go attend a race driving school, one where they teach evasive techniques. You will never see freeway rush hour the same way, I guarantee.

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 22, 2000.


There is a third group to add to the truckers and the farmers, who supply basic needs and goods to the population - and that is oil-patch personnel. If they did not do the grunt work to get the crude/nat. gas out of the ground, there would be no truckers, farmers, large industrial complexes, no research and development of computers, nothing to drive the stock market.

The oilpatch is not considered "techie" by those who don't know what goes on there and so the engineers who graduate from university who actually go to work in an oil-related company have absolutely no idea of the depth of the technology involved - this is from the experience of my husband, a veteran of 30 years in repair of oil tools & computerised systems.

We live in THE oil producing Province in Canada, Alberta, which is looked down on by many easterners and the federal politicians, who are always thinking of ways to take more revenue from Alberta and I can imagine now just how they are plotting to put in price subsidies to the disadvantage of Alberta...again. It took us many years to recover from the last National Energy Program.

Seems to me that in Ontario, I read that the cities were able to put fuel taxes on, so maybe it is true the Province hasn't done this, but communities have?

-- Laurane (familyties@rttinc.com), February 22, 2000.



Well, looks like the problem is spreading among the Canadian truckers. From the Feb 22nd Canoe:

"Canoe: Truckers Defy Court Order"

One quote:

Nova Scotia responded quickly Monday by obtaining an interim court injunction against the protest.

But the truckers were unimpressed.

"I asked him if it would be OK if I wiped my a&* on his paper..."

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 22, 2000.


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